Some days I feel like a better title for this project would be “Breaking the Book: How eBooks Botch the Reading Experience.” Why the pessism? As digital screens replace printed pages, the results often disappoint as much as they delight.

Yeah, that pretty much sums things up.

When Peter first pitched this idea to us I knew we needed to publish it. It closely aligns with our goals for TOC. In particular, we’re focused on brining the community together to work on the reinvention of publishing. Pretty ambitious, yes, but our community needs to work together on this opportunity.

Later in the introduction Peter goes on to talk about the questions he wants Breaking the Page to help answer. They include:

How can digital books remedy the shortcomings of print?

What is the purpose of the page?

Given an “infinite canvas” what kind of content is best suited to occupy this space?

How do you take things like gestures and motion and turn them into editorial elements on par with the introduction of, say, color ink?

I worked hard to make this one vapor-free ;). If you do any have interest, free downloads are available direct from the iBookstore (http://bit.ly/uLSTzm) and Amazon’s Kindle Store (http://amzn.to/rIIugN). Assuming you already have an account at one of those shops, no additional work required!

I can’t help but wonder whether “enhanced ebooks” isn’t a solution in search of a problem? I can see some enhancements in children’s books, and that it can be useful in reference books, but I can’t see any value in “enahncements” in narrative fiction.

In the audiobook world, there were experiments in adding sound effects: you’d actualy hear footsteps, or a gun shot. This did not go over well in the listening community, and I think it’s been pretty much abandoned. All a video or audio enhancement in my narrative fiction would do is pull me out of the story.